Hi,

Without discussing whether adding "generalized soft dependencies" would be a
good idea or not, let me give you my two cents about the syntax.

Quoting Eugene V. Lyubimkin (2013-05-08 20:51:54)
> Soft-Depends: a {90%}, b (>= 1.2) {20%}, c (>= 4) {99%}, c (>= 6) {70%}
> Soft-Depends: iceweasel {50%,tag:desktop}, curl {95%,if_not_installed:wget}
> Soft-Depends: debdelta {10%,text:"to enable automatic delta downloading"}

We (myself+wookey) recently proposed a new syntax to tag build dependencies
with build profiles for bootstrapping [1] but it was deemed not to be a good
idea to introduce a new meta character. Instead, it seems that your proposal
can easily be implemented using the unified qualifier proposal that was made by
Ian Jackson in the same thread [2] which does not spend an additional meta
character but extends the architecture qualification syntax:

Soft-Depends: a [minthresh:90], b (>= 1.2) [minthresh:20], c (>= 4) 
[minthresh:99], c (>= 6) [minthresh:70]
Soft-Depends: iceweasel [minthresh:50 tag:desktop], curl [minthresh:95 
!installed:wget]

I also started a thread to discuss Ian Jackson's proposal on d-dpkg@l.d.o [3]
where Raphael Hertzog gave a use case [4] for this syntax similar to the one
which you address here.

cheers, josch

[1] http://lists.debian.org/20130115181840.GA16417@hoothoot
[2] http://lists.debian.org/20726.45081.38709.233...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
[3] http://lists.debian.org/20130419194252.17205.76995@hoothoot
[4] http://lists.debian.org/20130421194955.gb2...@x230-buxy.home.ouaza.com


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